Is­raeli airstrikes pound­ed lo­ca­tions across the Gaza Strip ear­ly Thurs­day, in­clud­ing parts of the south that Is­rael had de­clared as safe zones, height­en­ing fears among more than 2 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans trapped in the ter­ri­to­ry that nowhere was safe.

In the near­ly two weeks since a dev­as­tat­ing Hamas ram­page in south­ern Is­rael, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary has re­lent­less­ly at­tacked Gaza in re­sponse.

Even af­ter Is­rael told Pales­tini­ans to evac­u­ate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes con­tin­ued overnight through­out the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ter­ri­to­ry.

A res­i­den­tial build­ing in Khan You­nis, a city in south­ern Gaza where hun­dreds of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans had sought shel­ter, was among the places hit. Med­ical per­son­nel at Nass­er Hos­pi­tal said they re­ceived at least 12 dead and 40 wound­ed.

The bom­bard­ments came af­ter Is­rael agreed Wednes­day to al­low Egypt to de­liv­er lim­it­ed hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to Gaza, the first crack in a pun­ish­ing 11-day siege. Many among Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion res­i­dents have cut down to one meal a day and re­sort­ed to drink­ing dirty wa­ter.

The an­nounce­ment of a plan to bring wa­ter, food and oth­er sup­plies in­to Gaza came as fury over a Tues­day night ex­plo­sion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hos­pi­tal spread across the Mid­dle East. There were con­flict­ing claims of who was be­hind the blast, which the Hamas-run Health Au­thor­i­ty said had killed hun­dreds of Pales­tini­ans.

Hamas of­fi­cials in Gaza blamed an Is­raeli airstrike, say­ing hun­dreds were killed. Is­rael de­nied it was in­volved and re­leased a flur­ry of video, au­dio and oth­er in­for­ma­tion that it said showed the blast was in­stead due to a rock­et mis­fire by Is­lam­ic Ji­had, an­oth­er mil­i­tant group op­er­at­ing in Gaza. Is­lam­ic Ji­had dis­missed the Is­raeli claim.

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press has not in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied any of the claims or ev­i­dence.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who vis­it­ed Is­rael on Wednes­day, said da­ta from his De­fense De­part­ment showed the ex­plo­sion was not like­ly caused by an Is­raeli airstrike. The White House lat­er said an analy­sis of “over­head im­agery, in­ter­cepts and open-source in­for­ma­tion” showed Is­rael was not be­hind the at­tack. But the U.S. con­tin­ues to col­lect ev­i­dence.

Video from the scene showed the hos­pi­tal grounds strewn with torn bod­ies, many of them young chil­dren. Hun­dreds of wound­ed were rushed to Gaza City’s main hos­pi­tal, where doc­tors al­ready fac­ing crit­i­cal sup­ply short­ages were some­times forced to per­form surgery on the floors, of­ten with­out anaes­the­sia.

More than 1 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans, rough­ly half of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion, have fled their homes in Gaza City and oth­er places in the north­ern part of the ter­ri­to­ry since Is­rael told them to evac­u­ate. Most have crowd­ed in­to U.N.-run school shel­ters or the homes of rel­a­tives.

Fol­low­ing ear­ly Thurs­day’s airstrikes, sirens wailed as emer­gency crews rushed to res­cue sur­vivors from a build­ing in Khan You­nis, where many res­i­dents were be­lieved trapped un­der mis­shapen bed frames, bro­ken fur­ni­ture and ce­ment chunks.

A small, soot-cov­ered child, un­con­scious and dan­gling in the arms of a res­cue work­er, was tak­en out of a dam­aged build­ing and rushed to­ward a wait­ing am­bu­lance.

Gaza’s Hamas-led gov­ern­ment said sev­er­al bak­eries in the ter­ri­to­ry were hit in the overnight strikes, mak­ing it even hard­er for hun­gry res­i­dents to get food.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said it killed a top Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant in Rafah, near the Egypt­ian bor­der, and hit hun­dreds of tar­gets across Gaza, in­clud­ing tun­nel shafts, in­tel­li­gence in­fra­struc­ture and com­mand cen­tres. It said it hit dozens of mor­tar launch­ing posts, most of them im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter they launched shells at Is­rael. Pales­tini­ans have been launch­ing bar­rages of rock­ets at Is­rael since the fight­ing be­gan.

Is­rael has said it is at­tack­ing Hamas mil­i­tants wher­ev­er they may be in Gaza, and ac­cused the group’s lead­ers and fight­ers of tak­ing shel­ter among the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, leav­ing Pales­tini­ans feel­ing in con­stant dan­ger.

The Musa fam­i­ly fled to the typ­i­cal­ly sleepy cen­tral Gaza town of Deir al-Bal­ah and took shel­ter in a cousin’s three-sto­ry home near the lo­cal hos­pi­tal. But at 7:30 p.m. Wednes­day, a se­ries of ex­plo­sions, be­lieved to be airstrikes, rocked the build­ing, turn­ing the fam­i­ly home in­to a moun­tain of rub­ble that they said buried some 20 women and chil­dren.

The dead body of Hi­am Musa, the sis­ter-in-law of As­so­ci­at­ed Press pho­to­jour­nal­ist Adel Hana, was re­cov­ered from the wreck­age Wednes­day evening, the fam­i­ly said. They don’t know who else is un­der the rub­ble.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Hana said. “We went to Deir al-Bal­ah be­cause it’s qui­et, we thought we would be safe.”

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said it was in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

In north­ern ar­eas that Is­rael warned to evac­u­ate, airstrikes al­so hit three res­i­den­tial tow­ers in al-Zahra, the Hamas-led In­te­ri­or Min­istry in Gaza said, as well as homes along the bor­der with Is­rael. Is­rael has massed troops in the area and is ex­pect­ed to launch a ground in­va­sion in­to Gaza, though mil­i­tary of­fi­cials say no de­ci­sion has been made.

The Gaza Health Min­istry said that as of Thurs­day, 3,785 peo­ple have been killed in Gaza since the war be­gan, the ma­jor­i­ty of them women, chil­dren and old­er adults. Near­ly 12,500 oth­er peo­ple have been wound­ed, the min­istry said.

More than 1,400 peo­ple in Is­rael have been killed, most­ly civil­ians slain dur­ing Hamas’ dead­ly in­cur­sion on Oct. 7. Rough­ly 200 oth­ers were ab­duct­ed. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said Thurs­day it had no­ti­fied the fam­i­lies of 203 cap­tives.

Vi­o­lence be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah mil­i­tants in Lebanon has al­so flared in re­cent days amid fears the Hamas-Is­rael con­flict could spread across the re­gion. In the West Bank, where scores of Pales­tini­ans have been killed since the war start­ed, Is­raeli forces killed dozens of Pales­tini­ans in the past two days, ac­cord­ing to the Pales­tin­ian Health Min­istry.

The deal to get aid in­to Gaza re­mained frag­ile, while hos­pi­tals in the sealed ter­ri­to­ry say they are on the verge of col­lapse.

Biden said Egypt’s pres­i­dent agreed to open the Rafah cross­ing to let in an ini­tial group of 20 trucks with hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid. If Hamas con­fis­cates aid, “it will end,” he said. The aid will start mov­ing Fri­day at the ear­li­est, White House of­fi­cials said.

Egypt must still re­pair the road across the bor­der, which was cratered by Is­raeli airstrikes. More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid are po­si­tioned at or near the cross­ing, Gaza’s on­ly con­nec­tion to Egypt, said the head of the Red Cres­cent for North Sinai, Khalid Za­yed.

Sup­plies will go in un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the U.N., Egypt­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sameh Shoukry told Al-Ara­biya TV. Asked if for­eign­ers and dual na­tion­als seek­ing to leave would be let through, he said: “As long as the cross­ing is op­er­at­ing nor­mal­ly and the (cross­ing) fa­cil­i­ty has been re­paired.”

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu’s of­fice said the de­ci­sion was ap­proved af­ter a re­quest from Biden. It said Is­rael “will not thwart” de­liv­er­ies of food, wa­ter or med­i­cine from Egypt, as long as they are lim­it­ed to civil­ians in the south of the Gaza Strip and don’t go to Hamas mil­i­tants. The state­ment made no men­tion of fu­el, which is bad­ly need­ed for hos­pi­tal gen­er­a­tors.

Rel­a­tives of some of the peo­ple who were tak­en hostage and forced back to Gaza dur­ing the Oct. 7 Hamas at­tack re­act­ed with fury to the aid an­nounce­ment.

“Chil­dren, in­fants, women, sol­diers, men, and el­der­ly, some with se­ri­ous ill­ness­es, wound­ed and shot, are held un­der­ground like an­i­mals,” said a state­ment from the Hostage and Miss­ing Fam­i­lies Fo­rum. But “the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment pam­pers the mur­der­ers and kid­nap­pers.”

In his brief vis­it, Biden tried to strike a bal­ance be­tween show­ing U.S. sup­port for Is­rael, while con­tain­ing grow­ing alarm among Arab al­lies. He al­so an­nounced $100 mil­lion in hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid for Pales­tini­ans in Gaza and the West Bank.

King Ab­dul­lah II of Jor­dan planned to meet in Egypt with Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Ab­del Fat­tah el-Sis­si to dis­cuss the con­flict. The two coun­tries have peace agree­ments with neigh­bour­ing Is­rael and are deal­ing with anger from their pop­u­la­tions over the hos­pi­tal blast.

British Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak ar­rived in Is­rael on Thurs­day in a trip aimed at show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty af­ter the Hamas at­tack and pre­vent­ing the war from es­ca­lat­ing.

The peo­ple of Is­rael had “suf­fered an un­speak­able, hor­rif­ic act of ter­ror­ism and I want you to know that the Unit­ed King­dom and I stand with you,” he said on ar­riv­ing.

Ness­man re­port­ed from Jerusalem and Kul­lab from Bagh­dad. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Amy Teibel and Is­abel De­bre in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy and Jack Jef­frey in Cairo; and Ashraf Sweil­am in el-Ar­ish, Egypt, con­tributed to this re­port.

KHAN YOU­NIS, Gaza Strip (AP) —